H-Net's central gathering place for scholars in the far flung, nascent field of Midwestern Studies

Hello and welcome to H-Midwest, H-Net's home for Midwestern Studies. H-Midwest spans all approaches to Midwestern Studies--sociology, literature, history, economics, cultural studies, law, arts--and questions in the broader field of regional studies as well. We will interrogate where, what, and who is "Midwestern," and why. Our aim is to explore the expanding contours of this growing field, and push them where needed. The H-Midwest Board creates features and resources for the field and welcomes your announcements, posts, queries, discussions, CFP's and all things Midwestern.

Take a look around. H-Midwest Roundtables, discussions, and announcements are below. The images of states above will take you to content relevent to each state. We also post CFP's in Midwestern Studies and reviews of books concerning the Midwest published by H-Net. H-Midwest's Book Review Editor is currently commissioning new reviews. If you have something to post and don't see a space for it, don't worry: if it's about the Midwest, we'll make a space for it.

H-Midwest Roundtables

H-Midwest Roundtables are a regular feature on H-Midwest. Each Roundtable introduces a subject or question in the field and a selection of thoughtful responses solicited from experts in the field, H-Midwest's Board, and responses to general calls. Roundtables are syntheses of current thinking on a subject and introduce a few new ideas and serve as starting points for discussion. Subscribers are invited to join the roundtable by replying to any contribution. At the end of each set of contributions is an open forum for thoughts on the roundtable subject generally.

Please join us in the Senate Chamber at Old Capitol at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2018, to hear a lecture on the History of Photography in Iowa, showcasing many images from the collections of the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Old Capitol Museum, in conjunction with the Department of History and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will host a lecture by CLAS Alumni Fellow Mary Bennett (BA '76, MA ’85, History), Special Collections Coordinator at the State Historical Society of Iowa—Iowa City.

MidAmerica, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, is published annually. We welcome submissions of scholarly essays from our members on any aspect of Midwestern literature and culture. Except for winners of our annual poetry and prose contests, we do not publish poems or fiction.

In one feature article, PAUL EMORY PUTZ, a doctoral candidate in history at Baylor Uni­versity, shows how, from 1908 to 1916, evangelical Protestant religious leaders in Des Moines organized and engaged in local elections under the Des Moines Plan’s commission form of government because they believed that they were uniquely equipped to provide the moral impulse for an otherwise materialistic city-boosting movement.

The Midwestern History Association and the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University invite proposals for papers to be delivered at the Fourth Annual Midwestern History Conference, to be held on June 6, 2018 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In case you're reading H-Midwest but you're not, for some reason, following us on Twitter, you are missing a great conversation on how the Midwest is studied and representated. It begins with a new book that seems to treat the Midwest as America's Heart of Darkness and ends (currently) with a video preview of a soon to be released documentary about the Midwest. The documentary seems to take a more enlightened view.

Recent events have taught me that I don't know nearly enough about the history of hate groups in Ohio. Ohio has a disproportionate number of hate groups here, according to statistics collected by the Southern Poverty Law Council, claiming 35 of the nation's 917 hate groups, including one of the largest, Southern Ohio Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and the White Nationalist website the Daily Stormer. I'm hoping to enlist an author researching this topic and ultimately produce an accessible book about the subject for our Trillium regional imprint.

May is Minnesota Museums Month, and May 18 is International Museum Day. H-Midwest participates in this celebration of the preservation and presentation of the state's culture with the initiation of a new blog, Museums of Minnesota. Throughout the month, directors, curators, other staffers, and volunteers at museums and historical societies around the state will be posting about their work, artifacts in their collections, exhibits, and the rich resources they house.

Earlier today, H-Midwest Board member Jon Lauck appeared on "Central Standard" on KCUR in Kansas City to discuss the topic "What is the Midwest?" It was a fun and informative half hour on our favorite subject. A lot of interesting (and some surprising) definitions of Midwest came up, and quite a bit of sterotype bunking was heard.

Wilbur Zelinsky wrote about Oklahoma in his book Cultural Geography of the United States. He categorized the state as one of three US regions of “uncertain status or affiliation.” (The other two were Texas and peninsula Florida.)

Zelinsky more or less said Oklahoma was divided culturally and geographically east and west. The eastern half of Oklahoma bordering Arkansas used to grow cotton and was like the South, but the western half is more like the Great Plains.

Given Oklahoma's Native American history and energy industry, I always thought of the state in the larger context of the West. If anything, it does raise (or repeat) a larger question regarding the study of American regionalism: to what extent can regions be defined by state boundaries? It's certainly convenient but, as works like Fischer's Albion's Seed or Woodward's American Nations show, things are not always so clearly defined.